Arthur Upfield - No footprints in the bush

“You’ll wait two days before sending up that signal smoke,” the doctor said, levelly.

McPherson lurched to his feet.

“I’ll do what?” he shouted. “Who the devil are you to dictate to me in my own country?”

“I’mO. C. Base Operations,”came the reply spoken with such steel coldness that McPherson winced despite his rage. “You blamed Bony for letting Rex take Flora. What kind of an ass are you to go off with a few blacks who were tricked by fake smoke signals? Your place was here keeping an eye wide open to counter just what did happen to Flora. You can’t accept termslaid down by an outlaw, a murderer, and possible madman. As Bony said, the only chance of getting Flora back is to employ subtlety. That’s what he’s doing. He and Burning Water are risking their lives. You are not going to act independently any more. If you even threaten to I’ll chain you to a tree.”

The Lizard andThe Snake

THE water gutter came down from the slope from the higher land, deep and sharp edged, passed beneath the massed top branches of a fallen gum-tree, thencezig-zagged wide and deep like a military trench far across the valley. It carried water only after heavy rain. The bed of coarse-grained sand now was dry and hot to the touch, for the sunlight fell directly upon it. Only beneath the fallen tree was there coolness and dark shadow. It was not unlike a war dugout, and there slept Burning Water and Napoleon Bonaparte.

Now and then a blowfly droned in the shadow created by the compressed leaves of the fallen tree, clinging to the coolness, waiting until the evening to venture farther afield. Other flies, too, were grateful for the cool shadow, the little flies which are a torment to the new-chum. The only living thing appreciative of the heat of the open gutter was a small lizard no larger than a pencil and five inches in length. Down its back lay a bar of old silver. Its little legs and underside were clothed in the softest of dove-grey. Its eyes were pin heads of bright jet.

It emerged from its hole in the side of the gutter, walked slowly down the side to the bottom and there halted and poised its head as though listening. It may not have been doing this, but undoubtedly it heard the occasional buzzing of a blowfly and the whirring of the wings of the smaller flies too faint to be within the scale of sound registered by human ears. The lizard ran along a straight course till it passed just inside the edge of the shadow made by the fallen tree.

Much like a cat, the lizard began to stalk a fly. The distance between it and the fly gradually lessened until it was a bare three inches. Then the fly began to move its wings as though loosening muscles preparatory to instant flight. It still thought itself safe, remained grandly confident of its power to escape a thing that had to remain on the ground. And then the lizard jumped, and the fly was between its jaws.

During the next hour it captured a dozen flies and made only two misses. It was a wonderful life, warm, crowded with good sport. Ah! There came another of the poor suckers to dance and mock. Down it came to alight on the earth. The lizard crouched and began to stalk, its attention concentrated on the victim. Eventually it leaped and caught the fly, and in that same split second saw its own doom in the slate-coloured eyes of the thing which had been stalking it for an hour.

The saltbush snake paralysed its victim with an injection of poison, just enough and no more toeffect a paralysis. Then slowly the lizard disappeared down the snake’s gullet, to swell a little a short section of the eighteen-inches-long, light-grey body.

It will be recalled that the great Alchuringa ancestor of this saltbush snake had been made byPitti-pitti’s evil son. This specimen proceeded to investigate the interior of the dugout and those who inhabited it. The kangaroo hide dilly-bag suspended from Burning Water’s neck, and now lying on the ground, provided much interest for the snake. It put its head into the opening of the dillybag, thought better of it and passed on to investigate a partly filled sugar sack. The contents did not appeal, and anyway it was not so very hungry. It crossed the sandy floor to reach the huge Kurdaitcha boots removed from Bony’s feet. The smell of blood and musty aroma of emu’s feathers was truly delightful, and in and out among these boots the saltbush snake moved like a playful mouse.

Of course everyone knows that a Kurdaitcha man is an evil spirit always wandering about the poor blackfellows’ camp at night. His evil is not very potent, but his presence is annoying and often has to be chased away. Sometimes he leaves behind one of his boots, the boots made of birds’ feathers and worn so that he will leave no tracks.

Anthropologists tell us that the Kurdaitcha boots in the possession of the aborigines are too small for the ordinary man’s feet, and that in any case the wearing of them would not prevent another aborigine from easily tracking the wearer. This would be so were the wearer a white man, for a white man would walk like a bull buffalo and with about as much intelligence, treading down grass stems, turning over sticks and stones and so forth. Properly made Kurdaitcha boots will enable any wily aborigine to escape a tracking avenging party.

The hours passed away into a cosmic silence broken only by the muttering of passingwilli -willies until Burning Water yawned and stretched himself. He then had been awake fully three minutes, listening intently not for sign of hostile blacks for he would not hear such signs, but the alarm notes of birds. The birds were quiet or busy about their own affairs, and before he went outside he knew by their voices that the sun was going down.

Quietly he rose and crawled on hands and knees down the gutter, passing from under the fallen tree roof, until he reached the butt of a solitary currant bush. Here he slowly raised his head above the rim of the gutter. First he examined with eagle eyes the flat expanse of the valley, and then regarded intently the scrubbed slopes rising to the high land east and west.

He saw nothing of interest, no uneasy frightened birds telling of hidden aborigines, no smoke signals in the clear sky, no kangaroos running because they must. The hill range beyond the valley was painted with russets and purple. He could see no shadows, but shadows lurked in this bright world, shadows with flames in their hearts. The splashes of colour were vast. Away to the east ten thousand acres were covered with yellow buttercups stretching up the bordering slopes. The green buckbush covered thousands of acres lying towards the centre of the plain, and a tiny purple-flowering creeper lay like a magic carpet of old Arabia over the summit of one of the distant hills.

When he returned to the dugout Burning Water was satisfied there were no enemies close to them, and certainly no enemy aware of their presence within twenty miles of the great cane-grass swamp. Carefully choosing his material, he made a fire which produced no smoke, confident that the hot air produced by the flames would be so diffused by the tree roof as to escape observation. On the fire he boiled water for tea in the only quart-pot they had with them.

As Burning Water had done, Bony lay still, listening for a minute or two before finally sitting up. Suave and polished when in contact with white civilization, he was able when in his beloved bush to tense his senses to the acuteness of the aborigines, to see and hear and reason as they do, to be as close to their background as they themselves.

This evening however his body was feeling the unusual strain of passing over eighty miles of bushland in three nights. He had been soft, he admitted freely to his companion, but he had not lagged. He had suffered much from the rigid rationing of his cigarettes, but he knew this rationing was doing his health enormous good. He had had to drink tea without milk or sugar, to eat flapjacks made only of plain flour and water, and once the roasted meat ofan goanna, and even thisspartan fare was not excessively distasteful to him because he dreaded a waistline.